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Last year in December, I wrote a blog post for you all where I shared my three favorite tips to get your feet under you when skate skiing. We received a great response from all of you on that post and I loved that I was able to help some people get out and get skiing - it's pretty much the best thing ever and I love getting to share that feeling.

When I wrote this last year, it was mid-December and we had just had our fist snowfall of the year so I wanted to revisit this post a year later while Vermont has been getting pummeled with snow and the skiing is as good as it has been in years. If all this snow has made anyone want to learn how to ski but been on the fence about it, this is your sign to go out and do it! I'll be cheering in spirit and I hope that these tips will help some new skiers get out there and loving it.

I wouldn't consider myself an expert or anything like that, but I hope that with 8+ years of being coached by the best in the biz (thank you AJ and Sverre), I will have picked up a few essential tips that I can pass on to anyone looking to get into the sport!

Images courtesy of Steve Fuller and David Brams - I totally don't look like this when I ski anymore, but its fun to look back on and smile.

When first getting comfortable on skis, balance can be a pretty tricky thing to nail down. Skate skiing tends to involve standing on one foot as you glide forward and this can be especially hard if you aren't comfortable with the feeling of sliding forwards on such skinny skis, so before diving into any of these tips and drills, I would recommend taking some time to familiarize yourself with the feeling of being on nordic skis. Start by using your core and arms to propel you forward while shuffling around and feeling the skis move across the snow beneath you, and as you get comfortable with that feeling you can start shifting your weight slightly from foot to foot as you pole. As your confidence doing this grows, you can try picking up one foot entirely for a pole push, and shifting your weight over to pick the other up on your next pole.

Skate skiing is broken down into three main techniques, V1 for going up hills, V2 for flats, and V2 alternate for going down hills. I don't want to bore you and try to explain the differences between the three here when I know that there are so many great YouTube tutorials that can explain it so much better than I can, so if you want to learn all the nuances of the techniques I would recommend a quick search of the internet and then coming back here for some tips and drills to help gain even more skills.

So, without further ado, here are three tips that will set you up to zoom past all your skiing friends.

Tip #1: Hips forward!

The key to skate skiing fast is preserving your forward momentum and letting gravity do all of the work for you, even if you are heading up a hill. To do this, you’ve got to bend at the ankles and knees to get your hips forward. If you are interested in trying out some drills, here is one to master keeping your hips forward: station yourself at the bottom of a gradual hill, put your skis in a V, your hands on your hips, and get into an athletic stance. Next, start to lean forward with your hips and upper body and notice as your skis move forward. As you go forward, do a little hop and bring your skis back to a V, but this time you have some momentum so you are gliding up the hill. Keep repeating the V to hop progression as you gradually pick up speed. Try not to hinge forward at your hips, instead use your hips to press your whole upper body forward. That forward body position is what you want to bring into your everyday skating, keep thinking about how the body position helped you glide up the hill as you bring arms and upper body back into the equation.

Tip #2: Crunch with your core and arms!

I was probably told this tip on nearly every ski I’ve been on in the last 8 years, but I like to think that by the end of my final racing season I started to actually listen and use my upper body as much as my lower body, and boy, did it change things! As you are skating along, it’s easy to push yourself forward using only leg strength with your arms going through the motions of skiing without actually doing anything, but by not using two big muscle groups your legs are getting tired quicker and you are not going as fast as you could be. As you shift your weight from side to side, you want to be activating your core to put maximum power into the pole plants and pushing out with your biceps and triceps. A good progression to run through to get the feel of this motion is the lock and load drill: point your skis straight forward and bend your arms so your elbows are pointed down at your side but your hands are up by your shoulders. Keeping your arms curled up like that, plant your poles and crunch with your core so that you slide forward using only that motion, no arms or legs. After moving like that for ten meters, stand straight up and propel yourself forward using only your arms. Lock out your stomach and use only the arms to get you going forward. Both of those are going to feel pretty bad on their own, so after ten meters of only using arms, meet in the middle and see how it feels for the two to work together and help each other out. As you find a happy medium with the arms and core, add in your legs and you should be set to jet!

Tip #3: Keep your body steady!

So by this point you have some things to think about regarding your upper body and your lower body, this last tip ties the two together. To maximize the power that you can create from your legs and upper body, you need to keep your upper body steady. It’s helpful to imagine a box between your hips and shoulders that keeps you facing forward. It’s easy to start twisting your torso around, but keeping your hips and shoulders pointed forward puts all of your power into moving down the trail as quickly as possible. A good way to practice keeping your hips quiet is to take your poles and hold them across your hips and start skiing. With the poles across your hips, it’s easy to tell how much they are wiggling around, so just try to keep the poles flat. 

I hope that these tips help you all with your skate skiing, but if I really had to be honest and say what I think the most important factor is, I would say the only thing that really matters is that you get out there and ski! Just getting outside and having fun is always more important than having perfect technique. 

Happy skiing!

All fired up to go skiing but don't know where to go? We reviewed our favorite Vermont Nordic Ski Centers!

Also - obligatory shout out to my brother and Bivo athlete Ben, he's got an awesome custom bottle that everyone in the ski world should have!